Hey Remember When Networks Had Battles?

In the form of fake Olympics with their prime time stars as athletes. Well here's some juicy retro goodness from the 1976 Battle of Network Stars.

Here NBC's captain Robert Conrad gets into it with ABC's Gabe Kaplan over a complaint made earlier by Telly Savalas. Eventually Conrad and Kaplan have a race between themselves to settle the issue, and well let's just say that Gabe only looks slow.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:44 PM | Comments (433)
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Above the post update:

Obama is speaking now. He's saying that it's a victory because the GOP wanted permanent cuts. I'm kind of meh on that. Yes, it complicates some planning but in realty no tax rate is ever "permanent". "Permanent" rates have gone up and down before. It's a bit more uncertain but mostly in name. Also, having a fight about raising taxes or not just before elections isn't a bad thing for Republicans.

Obama says he's sympathetic to those in his party who wanted to fight but he's about making tough choices or something. Triangulation baby.

One downside...the Earned Income Tax credit survived. I would love to see that go away but I doubt that's going to happen anytime soon.

Obama is "confident" that if he speaks to the nation over the next two years, he will convince Americans that tax rates should go up on the wealthiest. Yeah, because he never tried to do that for the 2 years he was running or the 2 years he's been President. One more speech, it's always one more speech with these guys.

Raising these taxes was at the top of the Obama agenda since he started running for President (he said so in this talk) and now he's caved. Not sure if that's part of Hope or Change.

Obama says he will spend next year focusing on the recovery. Just like he did before (remember "laser like focus on jobs"?) and then spent the year on...health care.

Bottom line...Obama got rolled. Now he gets to fight the left and the Democrats in Congress (birm). Heh.

Original Post:
Presidential statement coming at 6:10 est. (Update: Time has been moved back, unknown what time it will happen. Update 2: Are House Dems balking?)

Seems like he got his lunch handed to him.

President Barack Obama presented congressional Democratic leaders Monday with a proposed deal with Republicans that would extend Bush-era tax cuts for two years and unemployment benefits for 13 months while also setting the estate tax at 35% for two years on inheritances worth more than $5 million, a senior Democratic source told CNN.

The deal also includes a temporary 2% reduction in the payroll tax to replace Obama's "making work pay" tax credit from the 2009 economic stimulus package for lower-income Americans, the senior Democratic source said.

Wait, we get the current tax levels and a payroll break? Let the triangulation begin!

more...

Posted by: DrewM at 01:48 PM | Comments (423)
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As Ben says: We can't even print up money right. He thinks this is 10% of all currency in print, but doesn't have a source for that. $1 trillion then in all currency? Sounds low to me. I figure more like 1%, but let me know, if you know.

An official familiar with the situation told CNBC that 1.1 billion of the new bills have been printed, but they are unusable because of a creasing problem in which paper folds over during production, revealing a blank unlinked portion of the bill face.

A second person familiar with the situation said that at the height of the problem, as many as 30 percent of the bills rolling off the printing press included the flaw, leading to the production shut down.

The printing errors stem from very sophisticated printing techniques intended to foil counterfeiters. I guess if the techniques are this difficult for even the US print to manage, it will make life hard on counterfeiters.

Then again, the private sector is always better at their jobs than the government sector.

Posted by: Ace at 12:42 PM | Comments (129)
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He wants the middle class tax cuts extended, and says we have to do "whatever is necessary" to get job creation going. Possibly necessary, in his telling: Some kind of a deal in which neither Republicans nor Democrats (nor Obama) gets 100% of what is wanted.

This is what I guess Weiner was reacting to.

President Barack Obama called Democratic leaders to the White House Monday in hopes of advancing a year-end bipartisan compromise to extend expiring tax cuts for all Americans and renew jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed.

...

Obama signaled a looming deal during a speech in North Carolina Monday, saying he would cede ground in his positions to help Republican and Democratic lawmakers work out a deal.

"We've got to make sure we're coming up with a solution, even if it's not 100 percent what I want or 100 percent what the Republicans want," Obama said.

Obama seemed to signal he was backing off, rhetorically at least, his previous position that we ought to tax people at higher rates even if that actually results in a net decrease in government revenue. Increasing taxes on businesses and the wealthy, he had previously suggested, was a good in and of itself even if in practical terms it brought in no greater revenue (or even decreased it).

Now he implies that a tax cut for the wealthy isn't necessarily a bad thing, except we can't afford it "right now." Of course he doesn't explain why we can afford all sorts of other things we can't afford "right now," like ObamaCare and the Non-Stimulative Stimulus or endless bailouts for the states so that they are not forced to reduce government workers' pay and benefits. (And that is 90% of what these bailouts are about -- not "services," but salaries for current government employees.)

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Posted by: Ace at 12:20 PM | Comments (41)
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I thought this was a good, funny spin on Assange's operation. The end joke (the source for a particularly embarrassing video leak about Hillary) makes it worth watching. Note: I am having trouble actually connecting to the videos. I don't know if this is just a problem I'm having or a problem NBC is having. So you might wind up clicking and just getting an ad, and then an error seeing the actual content. more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:48 AM | Comments (91)
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Isn't that always the case? When Jim DeMint calls for ideological discipline, it's a civil war within the party, and furthermore, unamerican in that it is push towards polar extremes of policy that make compromise less likely (or impossible).

You've read 1000 stories with this basic take. Conservatives are evil for pushing a stronger form of conservatism, because it frays the delicate fabric of political society and so on and suchlike.

And yet, when an Anthony Weiner calls for the same type of ideologically rigidity but for the liberal ideology, there is no tut-tutting or cluck-clucking from the media. Such calls are either deemed "good" and useful, or simply benign, or, my favorite, sort of bad but caused entirely by conservatives who are polarizing our politics and causing nice good clear-thinking people like Anthony Weiner to adopt more combative postures themselves.

Here's Weiner rallying the troops:

Rep. Anthony Weiner (N.Y.) had harsh words for President Obama on Twitter on Monday as the White House and leaders in Congress neared a deal to extend both the Bush tax cuts and expired federal jobless benefits.

"Memo to our President," Weiner tweeted, "Why are we always punting on 3rd down? Lets get our offense on the field."

This is the second time in recent weeks that Weiner, a liberal Democrat, has knocked Obama for his dealings with Republicans.

Following a White House meeting between the president and GOP leaders Dec. 30, Weiner criticized Obama for playing too nice.

"I think that President Obama sees bipartisanship as an ends rather than a means," he told the New York Observer.

JWF knocks Weiner for his football analogy, too, noting that you punt on fourth down, not third, unless you're in the Canadian leagues. I'm not sure that part is a mistake, though -- Weiner may be saying that Obama is punting before a punt is even required or prudent, an actual (but rare) play in American football called a quick kick. (I could be technical and note that when you punt, your offensive is already on the field -- the offense punts, not the defense. "Let's get our offense on the field" is technically wrong; "let's keep our offense on the field is correct.)

Maybe Weiner should avoid sports analogies completely.

Football quibbles aside, that's standard criticism conservatives have of our so-called leadership (and one that I believe, a good 85% of the time) -- yes, politics requires compromise, sometimes, but our leadership does seem to want to punt on third down. Or second. Or first.

So I can't get too outraged that Weiner is urging this. But what makes me angry is that liberals get praised by the MFM for this sort of statement -- the media loved Howard Dean's catchphrase "I'm from the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party," for example, implicitly calling out many Democrats as insufficiently combative and ideological -- while conservatives are tarred as unreasoning, unreasonable, and unamerican for doing the same thing.

At Hot Air, Claire McCaskill sounds the same notes, calling for "pitchforks" if there's a compromise on the Bush Tax Cuts.

Again, I ask: Why should she not be branded an unamerican extremist? Isn't compromise the highest value a politician should aspire to?

That's rhetorical, of course. In the MFM's telling -- as in their deep-seated belief -- it is wise, noble, and good for a liberal to be as uncompromisingly liberal as possible, as strong-form liberalism is inherently "Good," whereas conservatism is inherently "Evil," so the best move a conservative can make in their eyes (short of outright conversion) is to compromise their Evil so that some Good should prevail.

The media's Humpty Dumpty position on compromise -- an objective good for conservatives, a weak-sister response for liberals -- is a perfect example of how the media crafts neutral-sounding story lines when in fact the choice of when to deploy grossly incompatible and contradictory storylines is shot through with dishonest partisanship and dishonest ideological dealing.

Posted by: Ace at 11:12 AM | Comments (122)
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No, I don't think so, and I don't think Geraghty does either, his provocative headline aside. True, O'Donnell cashes out of the campaign with close to a million dollars (which can in fact be used to pay herself a salary in preparation for another run at office), but then, there was really no reason to spend that last million.

It was, as predicted, a lost cause:

Then again, perhaps OÂ’DonnellÂ’s campaign spending was moot, and there was no point in spending this $924,000 or so. OÂ’Donnell ultimately spent $6.1 million, a record for Delaware and almost twice what Coons spent, $3.2 million. During the brief general election campaign, she never closed the margin to less than 10 points and lost, 56.6 percent to 40 percent.

I had suspicions along these lines myself. I said, a couple of times, more in personal discussion than public discussion, I sure would like to see how much money she winds up socking away for future salary.

Honestly, I still do have these suspicions. But I can't really call this evidence for my suspicions as the case is overdetermined.

That's a very useful word I got from Kaus, meaning their are several factors at work here, any of which would be enough to predict/explain the behavior, therefore it is erroneous to claim that someone behaved as she did according to any one factor. In other words, either A (wants money) and B (lost cause) on their own would explain behavior X (keeping $1 million unspent), and since A and B were both demonstrably present, I can't claim that X happened because of A. It also could have happened because of B. Either factor would dictate behavior X, and there's no way to prove it was due to the impermissible motive.

I can't say she saved that $1 million just because she's a cynical operator and wanted to set aside a little somethin'-somethin' to pay herself a nice salary for two years, because the other factor -- what's the point of sinking another million into a hole? -- would also be plenty reason to not spend it.

Further, since I do believe she wanted that Senate seat (even just for the salary, if one is very cynical about her motives), I do believe she would have spent that last near-million had the race been close and the additional money likely to have an impact.

I think this is the final chapter in this saga. Well, there'll be more, of course (book deal, tv appearances), but this was the last big thing that would pick open scabs about the choice of O'Donnell. Given that the race was never even close, and money did not seem to be helping, it's a permissible motivation that a candidate, especially a three-time eternally quixotic candidate, would put aside some money for some other more winnable run down the road.

Posted by: Ace at 10:53 AM | Comments (195)
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I know the SPLC jumped the shark 20 years ago, and they've been jumping and re-jumping it ever since. But this is a new milestone in stupid.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) says it will not back down from its decision to label the Family Research Council and other socially conservative groups as hate groups, on par with the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Nations, for their views about homosexuality.

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins recently asked SPLC to retract the hate group designation, but SPLC Intelligence Project Director Mark Potok told The Daily Caller that will never happen.

SPLC’s Winter 2010 edition of its “Intelligence Report” magazine lists the Family Research Council as a hate group alongside the American Family Association, the Traditional Values Coalition, and 11 other social conservative groups. The report, titled “18 Anti-Gay Groups and Their Propaganda,” also lists five other organizations as being anti-gay – such as Concerned Women for America and the National Organization for Marriage — but refrains from classifying them as hate groups.

According to SPLC, the Family Research Council, Concerned Women for America and the other similar groups spread “known falsehoods — claims about LGBT people that have been thoroughly discredited by scientific authorities — and repeated, groundless name-calling.”

“Labeling people and groups as hate groups is laying the groundwork to then charge them with hate crimes using the full force of government to oppress people for their beliefs,” said Concerned Women America President Wendy Wright.

The reason for this claim is that some members of these organizations say some wrong-headed or merely debatable stuff about gays -- such as claiming that gays molest kids at a higher rate than straight men do.

That's a tricky one. That stat seems misused by anti-gay activists, but, on the other hand, a fact's a fact -- I've always been very annoyed at how this factoid is dismissed by gay activists. It is true that incidents of homosexual molestation occur at a higher rate, controlling for the straight/gay ratio, than incidents of "straight" molestation.

The typical manner of dismissing this factoid is to claim that incidents of pedophilia are neither straight nor gay, but simply pedophilliac, and categorizing them as one or the other is, I guess, some type of category mistake. So there is no such thing, this argument goes, as "gay molestation."

I don't know if that's true, but it seems like a suspectly easy form of argument to make. While that argument might hold true for a minority of child predators -- those who seem to be attracted to nothing but the too-young age, and are omnisexual in their choice of victims -- it seems that most child-abusers have a very strict preference as far as gender, and it seems strange to me to claim, with little argument offered as to why it should be this way, that a man who prefers to molest boys exclusively isn't "homosexual" at all, not even a little bit.

Really? Not at all? They're "straight" but prefer young boys? How does that work?

On the other hand, this factoid tends to get misused. Child molestation is a rare phenomenon (not rare enough, of course) so differences between "very rare" and "just slightly above very rare" in this area of sexual evil seems to be a very weak foundation for building an entire theory of generalized gay dysfunction on.

It getting to this conclusion -- gays are psychologically screwed-up and have a much higher propensity to sexual evil due to their dysfunction -- a much more important factor has to be ignored. Because while gay molestation occurs at a higher rate than straight molestation (controlled for population of gays/straights), another factor is so, so much more important it's a willful act to ignore it: Men molest at hugely higher rates than women.

So would we take this same line of reasoning and call men generally dysfunctional?

In a way, we do, sort of, because we all are aware that children are safer when looked after by women than men, and most people would never consider, say, hiring a male babysitter. But while acknowledging that men are much more likely to be involved in sexual evil than women, we don't create a grader, unified theory of male sexual evil.

Well, feminists do, of course, but that's easy for them, as they've deemed men to be the Enemy and when at War it's expected that you can propagandize, as unfairly as you like, against the Enemy.

That said, the citation of a a group's citation of a fact, which is, you know, either sort of true or just plain true depending on your perspective, seems a very weak reason to brand the Family Research Council a "hate group."

I think the real reason the SPLC has branded the FRC a "hate group" is because that group gets a lot more agitated about TV shows or movies that include, say, a non-pornographic gay kiss, where they'd never rate a show featuring a similar straight kiss as making a show inappropriate for children or worthy of moral condemnation. The SPLC is taking the position that both are the same and to treat them differently is "hate."

It's not. The sexual left really has to get over this. People get wiggy about gay stuff, especially parents, who don't want their kids seeing anything other than standard-issue chaste sexual behavior between appropriate partners. That tendency may retard the gay agenda, in as much as it prevents their goal of a society that makes no differentiation whatsoever between gay sex and straight sex, but that's not hate. That may be an unfortunate outcome for them, but you can't call someone a "hater" just because they, like 10,000 generations before them, find gay sex to be deviant and strange.

Posted by: Ace at 10:36 AM | Comments (124)
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Democratic shill Mark Halperin thinks he knows exactly what Obama needs to get his mojo back...a little "luck" in the form of a terrorist attack or some other national tragedy.

Should Obama effectively confront these dynamics, he will still need some luck. Busy as he's been, he has not yet experienced a single major moment that has benefited him politically. The most dramatic events of his term — the BP oil spill, the passage of the health-care law, the arms-control agreement with Russia — have had either no impact or a negative influence on Obama's standing.

No one wants the country to suffer another catastrophe. But when a struggling Bill Clinton was faced with the Oklahoma City bombing and a floundering George W. Bush was confronted by 9/11, they found their voices and a route to political revival. Perhaps Obama's crucible can be positive — the capture of Osama bin Laden, the fall of the Iranian regime, a dramatic technological innovation that revitalizes American manufacturing — something to reintroduce him to the American people and show the strengths he demonstrated as a presidential candidate.

Good lord. Can you imagine if someone wrote that in say, the Weekly Standard, about a Republican President?

Poor Obama, he can't even catch a break with nutty anti-government types like Clinton did. What's a hardcore lefty have to do to get a little love hate from the reichwingers?

FTR- I don't think Halperin (or Obama) want to see a catastrophic attack on the US for political gain. I just think Halperin is pointing out that, 'hey, if there is one...silver lining baby!". It's a cheap and disgusting form of analysis and calling it 'luck' does cross the line of decency.

Yes, Clinton and Bush did benefit from a boost in popularity that any President gets in such times, but Halperin ignores a key difference between the two. Clinton actively courted a partisan advantage from the Oklahoma City bombing by blaming a national tragedy on political opponents who were unconnected to the event. Bush on the other hand, tried to rally the whole country after 9/11 and never pointed a partisan finger at Democrats. This despite ample reason to argue Clinton's 'wall' between intelligence and law enforcement left us vulnerable to such an attack.

Something else to consider...America is suffering from a great tragedy right now, the economy. Sure it's not a visible pile of bodies (fingers crossed, eh Mark?) but the dislocations and suffering are real. Of course Obama can't "capitalize" on this national tragedy for the very simple reason that his policies are at the very least contributing to its continuation and its worsening.

Posted by: DrewM at 09:48 AM | Comments (157)
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"Unique" doesn't mean what it does in ordinary speech, so no, 100 million people haven't come here. (A "unique" is just like one visit in a two hour window or something; it reduces the raw figure from hits by not counting refreshes/comments that come faster than that.)

Still, it's a big big number. And it wouldn't have happened without readers and commenters, and the cobloggers and the terrific guest bloggers that sub in from time to time (and especially last week, thanks!).

I feel bad about this happening right now since I'm still burned out and not finding a good angle on stuff, and I know that my blogging is weak as hell lately. Would have been nicer if this happened during, say, the Ewok Stalker period

But still , it's a nice smile for the day. I am deeming today the 100 Million Moron March. Although, there will be no march, because it's cold and who the hell wants to march?

Posted by: Ace at 09:24 AM | Comments (188)
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